XXI
The Zapatistas aren’t in any hurry. They’re waging a masterful media war, keeping up the pressure while dissidents across the country go on the alert and mobilize. The pressure must be kept up in order to establish nonfraudulent conditions for the next elections.
A space for the social movements opens. Some of the townships that were occupied in the coastal region of Chiapas throw out mayors accused of fraud; indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Puebla mobilize; 10,000 teachers in Chiapas march to demand a 100 percent increase in salary. During this impasse, Zapatismo acquires social legitimacy through T-shirts, posters, continuous declarations of allegiance.
The electoral campaign of the left and center left, a broad front led by Cárdenas, is growing and has adopted the Zapatistas’ program as its own. A ring is forming around the PRI that will make it difficult for the party to stage more fraudulent elections in August.
Are we nearing the end of the oldest dictatorship in the world? From 1920 to 1994 they have governed this country in the name of modernity and a betrayed revolution. Has their moment passed?
XXII
For now we’re walking on shadows, disturbed and filled with hope. We are waking up with the distinct feeling that we slept among phantoms.
Also available from Akashic Books
MEXICO CITY NOIR
edited by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
176 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Eugenio Aguirre, Eduardo Antonio Parra, Bernardo Fernández, Óscar de la Borbolla, Rolo Díez, Víctor Luiz González, Francisco Gerardo Haghenbeck, Juan Hernández Luna, Myriam Laurini, Eduardo Monteverde, and Julia Rodríguez.
It’s hard to get much more noir than Mexico City, and after several years’ effort, Akashic was finally able to rope Paco I. Taibo into curating this dramatic, chilling, and frequently hilarious volume.
ADIOS MUCHACHOS
a novel by Daniel Chavarría; translated by Carlos Lopez
246 pages, trade paperback original, $13.95
*Winner of an Edgar Award
“Celebrated in Latin America for his noir detective fiction, Uruguayan author Chavarría makes his English-language debut with this fast-paced novel … a zesty Cuban paella of a novel that’s impossible to put down.”
—Library Journal
“Daniel Chavarría has long been recognized as one of Latin America’s finest writers. Now he again proves why …”
—Edgar Award-winning author William Heffernan
LIKE SON
a novel by Felicia Luna Lemus
280 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95
“A writer with an unparalleled literary style and attitude, Felicia Luna Lemus comes charging full force.”
—El Paso Times
“[A] must-read book.”
—Latina Magazine
“Lemus doesn’t waste a word in this smart novel.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[A] powerfully written chronicle of love.”
—Booklist
AMERICAN VISA
a novel by Juan de Recacoechea
translated by Adrian Althoff w/an afterword by Ilan Stavans
258 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95
“American Visa, which won Bolivia’s National Book Prize in 1994 and was made into a movie in 2005, is both dark and quirky, a revealing excursion to a place over which ‘the gringos’ to the north always loom.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Near-broke, provincial, middle-aged Mario Alvarez seems a bit like an older, only slightly wiser, but oddly more likable Holden Caulfield … A serious novel made palatable by humor as dry as the Andean uplands in which it is set.”
—Kirkus Reviews
ANDEAN EXPRESS
a novel by Juan de Recacoechea
translated by Adrian Althoff
176 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
“It takes a gutsy publisher like Akashic to bring the works of the Bolivian novelist Juan de Recacoechea into English. Subtle, nuanced, elegantly styled, Andean Express is a great introduction to this gifted author’s work … It’s the interchange between the characters that’s at the heart of this novel. De Recacoechea has touches of the old noir masters like Jim Thompson, but the voice is uniquely his …”
—Globe and Mail (Canada)
SOUTHLAND
a novel by Nina Revoyr
350 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
*Winner of the Lambda, Ferro-Grumley, and ALA Stonewall awards
“The plot line of Southland is the stuff of a James Ellroy or a Walter Mosley novel … But the climax fairly glows with the good-heartedness that Revoyr displays from the very first page.”
—Los Angeles Times
These books are available at local bookstores.
They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com.
To order by mail send a check or money order to:
AKASHIC BOOKS
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
www.akashicbooks.com, [email protected]
(Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $12 to each book ordered.)
The Uncomfortable Dead Page 26